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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27868169">You can't live without the fire</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/misskraken/pseuds/misskraken'>misskraken</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Bucky Barnes and the 21st Century, M/M, Memory Loss, Other Additional Tags to Be Added</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-11 00:28:06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,949</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27868169</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/misskraken/pseuds/misskraken</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>James Barnes escapes Hydra and joins the Avengers.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers, Sharon Carter/Natasha Romanov</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>21</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Drowning</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I'm baaaaaaaaaaaack.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>James feels her before he sees her. He doesn’t particularly care if she tries to kill him.</p><p>The woman’s red hair burns in his peripheral, but he keeps staring at the display in front of him, at the image of the dark-haired soldier on the wall, looming above him in hazy black-and-white. </p><p>The man in the photo stares just beyond the camera, his gaze heavy and pensive. He’s young, no more than twenty-five, with a hint of baby fat still rounding out his cheeks and jaw. A boy’s face, really. </p><p>Once upon a time, this was James’s face.</p><p>“They made a movie about you, you know,” the woman says. </p><p>James knows this. He’d seen the first trailer for it on the TV at a diner in Milwaukee nine months prior, but he’d been too tired to care at the time. Recently, however, it’s made researching himself easier. Judging from the influx of everything from New York Times articles to mini-documentaries to the brand new wing of the Captain America exhibit in the National Air and Space Museum, it seems that everyone can’t get enough of the tragic James Barnes, the best friend and right-hand man of Captain Steve Rogers. </p><p>Of course it all comes down to Rogers in the end. The only reason anyone cared to document James’s existence at all was because of their friendship. James should be grateful.</p><p>If he were a better man, maybe he would be.</p><p>“Was it good?” James asks, still staring straight ahead. His voice sounds strange in his own ears, rusty from disuse.</p><p>“Eh,” the woman says. “The Brit they got to play you sounded like he decided to watch The Sopranos in lieu of hiring a dialect coach, but it was decent, as far as war movies go. Solid seven out of ten.”</p><p>James looks at her then, and something in his chest twists at the sight of her. In her tight jeans and flowing peasant top, she could be any tourist at the Smithsonian, here for a day out with her family or friends. But in spite of his shattered memory, James remembers her, remembers the fear in her eyes when the he shot her.</p><p>His gaze flicks to her left hip.</p><p>“Relax, Sergeant Barnes,” she tells him. “No hard feelings, I promise.”</p><p>In spite of the midday heat, James wears a massive flack jacket that hangs loose even on his heavy frame. Even so, a chill creeps across his neck and shoulders. He shoves his metal hand into the pocket of his jeans.</p><p>“What do you want?” </p><p>“I’m here to make you an offer,” she says. “My friends and I have been tracking your progress for a hot minute. Fifteen Hydra bases gutted and burned to the ground in a little over a year? Very impressive.”</p><p>James snorts, a dry ghost of a laugh.</p><p>“Well,” he says, “glad you like that better than some of my earlier work.”</p><p>For a moment, the woman says nothing. She tilts her head, eyes thoughtful.</p><p>“But that wasn’t really you, was it?” she says softly. “We’ve read the files. Trust me, if we didn’t know about the brainwashing, I wouldn’t be asking you to join us.”</p><p>James bites at a patch of raw flesh on the inside of his lower lip, lets the iron taste of blood flood his tongue before he speaks.</p><p>“And why would I join you?” he asks. </p><p>“I believe we can help each other,” she says. “As an Avenger, you’d be offered security, or as much security as someone can get in our line of work. Any acts committed by the Winter Soldier would no longer exist in the eyes of the American government. You’d have a freshly-scrubbed slate, and believe me when I tell you those aren’t easy to come by.”</p><p>James doesn’t answer.</p><p>“You don’t have to decide today,” the woman says, “but we’d prefer to move quickly. You have the week to think it over. If you choose to join, I’ll meet you here, same time next Friday.”</p><p>And then she’s gone, the faint smell of her rosy perfume lingering for a split second before it fades.</p><p>~</p><p>Rogers sits on James’s chest that night, grinning with too many teeth. He’s as small as he was before the serum, but unnaturally thin, the bones jutting beneath his skin. James tries to push him off, but he’s heavier than anything James has ever felt before, and it feels as if his sternum is being crushed. James gasps for air.</p><p>“Little toy soldier,” Rogers hisses in guttural German. “You want to be a lapdog now, is that it?”</p><p>James crooks the fingers of his metal hand and gouges them into Rogers’s eyes. They burst, and too much blood gushes from the sockets. It fills the room, fills James’s mouth and nose, and he’s drowning, he’s drowning-</p><p>He jolts awake in bed, the sheets tangled around his legs. He mindlessly grabs the knife tucked beneath the mattress and swings it in an arc in front of him.</p><p>The motel room is empty. James’s breathing slows as he collapses back against his pillow.</p><p>He’s alone. He’s always been alone.</p><p>The digital clock on the nightstand shows that it’s a little after two in the morning. The sheets are soaked with sweat, and James knows there’s no chance of him going back to sleep. He gets up, shucks off his boxers, and heads to the shower. </p><p>James loves showering. It’s one of the things that surprised him when he first escaped Hydra two years ago, when his mind was still little more than that of a scared animal, his memory virtually nonexistent and his mind only operating in fight or flight. </p><p>But even here, in the shittiest motel in D.C., in a shower that looks like it hasn’t had a good scrubbing since Reagan was assassinated, James finds himself almost smiling as he soaps up a washcloth and runs it over his skin. </p><p>Hydra didn’t let him bathe himself. From what James remembers, they always had no fewer than two agents to hose him down. He’s not really sure why.</p><p>He turns the knob of the shower to its hottest setting. </p><p>Mine, a small, nonsensical voice in the back of his mind says as he scrubs the broad expanse of his chest. Mine, and no one else’s.</p><p>Once he’s dried himself off, James heads back into the room and changes into a fresh pair of clothes: boxers, sweatpants, and a t-shirt that bears the words “my heart beets for borscht” on the back and a beet-shaped logo for a restaurant called Veselka’s on the front. James grabbed it from a Goodwill in New York only a few months ago, but it feels a little tighter than usual. It makes sense, he supposes, now that he’s actually eating consistently. </p><p>James switches on a light, hoists his backpack onto the bedspread, and takes inventory of the contents, as he does every morning: a couple spare changes of clothes, a pack of underwear, clean socks, toothpaste, a toothbrush, deodorant, a gun, various knives, and a few protein bars.</p><p>And then there’s the notebook. It’s fairly innocuous: just a ratty black-and-white composition book, the cover slightly water-warped from a fight in the rain James had with a couple of Hydra agents a few months ago, but James would gladly hand over everything else in the pack before he ever parted with this. He packs everything back up and opens the notebook to the first page.</p><p>James started logging his memories of his life before Hydra about a year ago. There’s little rhyme or reason to how they come back. Some are triggered by the articles he reads about himself, but far more return when he least expects them. The scent of pancakes in a Georgia Waffle House brought back an image of his mother in their tiny kitchen. The scent of rain on asphalt in a Walmart parking lot brought a memory of James trying his first cigarette on a fire escape of his family’s tiny apartment. So far, the notebook is only about half of the way filled.</p><p>James rereads his memories, keeping his mind open and quiet, (or as quiet as his mind ever gets, anyway) in case one memory triggers another. It feels like walking down a long hallway and knocking on every door to see who will answer. Nothing comes tonight, however, and James tries not to feel discouraged that he hasn’t remembered anything new in two weeks.</p><p>James turns the page to his last recorded memory. It was one of Rogers, long before the war: the two of them walking down the streets of Brooklyn on a cold night, Rogers laughing at a joke James had told him. James very nearly didn’t record that one. Thanks to Hydra’s torture, some of his memories come back warped and dream-like, with soldier’s bodies bursting into moths and girls whose tongues wrapped all the way around their heads. In this memory, Rogers is glowing, actually glowing, his skin like the flame of a candle, and somehow James is the only one who notices.</p><p>As he traces his finger across his spiny handwriting, James still feels silly for keeping it. He doesn’t even give a shit about Rogers. He knows that he did, long ago. He knows that he considered him a brother, even, but none of that matters anymore. Rogers has been dead since 1945, his bones floating somewhere in the Artic Ocean, and despite virtually all the articles of James’s life being tied to Rogers’s life, this is the only memory he has of him.</p><p>Of course, that doesn’t stop Rogers from making regular appearances in his nightmares.</p><p>James shuts the notebook and walks over to the window. The sky is just beginning to lighten in the east, and the pane is cold when he leans his forehead against it.</p><p>I believe we can help each other, the woman had said.</p><p>As little as he trusts her, James knows she’s right. He can’t defeat Hydra on his own. The frenzied survival instincts that carried him through the first year are gone, and in spite of the serum, he can feel the weariness taking root in his bones. He knows that eventually he’ll slip up, that Hydra will catch up to him, that he’ll attack the wrong base on the wrong night. If James believed that all they would simply put a bullet through his brain, perhaps this wouldn’t bother him so much. He’s held one of his own knives to his throat before and found he couldn’t do the deed, but if the world had any justice, he’d have died decades ago.</p><p>But of course, Hydra would never do something as merciful as kill him. They will be eager to have their favorite puppet back.</p><p>“Even machines run down eventually,” one of Hydra’s more anxious doctors had said to a handler the day before James escaped. “And this one is only human, at the end of the day.”</p><p>Hydra had grown careless over the years. They no longer recalibrated James as thoroughly as they once had, or as frequently. The trance was unraveling too quickly, though only James himself could tell.</p><p>To his dying day, James would remember how the handler caressed his face, slotting his thumb through the cleft in his chin. Like a lover, James thought, the words breaking through the lingering haze of Hydra’s control, and it filled him with so much revulsion that he was grateful for the vicious slap that followed. </p><p>“Not this one,” the handler said with a smirk. “Not this one.”</p><p>That night, James lifted a knife from the handler’s holster when he brought him back to his cell. As many Hydra agents as James has killed since then, none of them have ever compared to the joy James felt when he sank the blade into the handler’s eye.</p><p>He’s no longer the Winter Soldier. He’s no longer the loyal sidekick of Captain America. </p><p>Maybe now, he has the chance to become someone else entirely.</p><p>Somewhere down the street, a car alarm goes off. All around him, the city is stirring, the good and the bad rising with the sun.</p><p>“Alright,” James says, to no one in particular.</p><p>~</p><p>She’s waiting for him at the exhibit.</p><p>For a second, the two of them stand in silence as the wing’s narrator drones on around them:</p><p>“Best friends since childhood, Bucky Barnes and Steve Rogers were inseparable on both schoolyard and battlefield.”</p><p>The woman looks over at him, her eyes heavy with something James has no name for.</p><p>“I’m glad you came,” she murmurs.</p><p>James doesn’t know what to say to that, so he just nods.</p><p>Another moment passes, and she clears her throat.</p><p>“Is that what I should call you?” she asks. “Bucky?”</p><p>James shakes his head, and there’s a part of him that wants to scoff. Bucky. A nickname for a child.</p><p>“James is fine,” he says.</p><p>For the first time since they met, the woman smiles.</p><p>“Okay, James,” she says. “I’m Natasha.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Opening</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Natasha is with him throughout the screening process. Though James would never admit it, he’s grateful.</p><p>He spends his first evening at the Avengers Compound in a pristine white lab under the care of one Dr. Helen Cho. She greets him warmly and directs him to sit in the well-cushioned chair in the center of the room before pulling up a seat for Natasha.</p><p>“I’m just going to be running a series of non-invasive neurological scans,” she explains. “I have some idea of what to expect from your files, but this will give us a concrete image of what we’re looking at.” </p><p>She presses a series of buttons on the tablet in her hands, a series of holographic panels materialize in a semi-circle around James’s chair: glowing x-rays of his brain, his skull, his entire body. James wonders if Dr. Cho took them all just  now, or if there’s something in the chrome walls of this place that’s been scanning him from the moment he stepped on the premises.</p><p>“If you have any questions,” Dr. Cho says, “please speak up.”</p><p>James opens his mouth, then, upon realizing his doesn’t even know what he doesn’t know, shuts it.</p><p>As promised, the procedure is as hands-off as James could’ve hoped. Dr. Cho putters around the holograms, touching her index finger to certain areas to enlarge them before typing away at her tablet. She frowns occasionally, but apart from a few muttered words under her breath, she says very little. There’s music playing quietly in the background, something soft and piano-based, and Natasha hums along quietly as she scrolls through her phone.</p><p>It should be a peaceful scene, but James can see the way Dr. Cho’s hands shake ever so slightly when she works at the panel closest to him, the way Natasha never quite relaxes her posture in her chair. They know he’s dangerous, know the grip Hydra still has on his mind. Just a handful of words, and he’s a weapon again. It’s a miracle that Hydra was never got the chance to use them during one of his raids. One doctor at a base in North Carolina got about three words in while James was preoccupied with a guard before he was able to silence him with a knife thrown neatly through his larynx. The stabbing pain at the base of James’s skull took forty-eight hours to completely fade, and he never attacked another base again without something to plug his ears.</p><p>“Hey, James,” Natasha says suddenly. “Look at what my wife sent me just now.”</p><p>She holds her phone out so that James can see the screen. There’s a video playing of a little calico cat purring happily as its owner, who’s mostly hidden offscreen, drums lightly across its arched back with two empty paper towel rolls. Every time the drumming stops, the cat begins to howl indignantly until it begins again. Natasha laughs softly when the cat rears up on its hind legs to grab at the rolls.</p><p>“Isn’t that great?” she says.</p><p>“Is that your cat?” James asks.</p><p>“Oh no,” Natasha says, placing her phone back in her lap. “We don’t have one just yet.”</p><p>“Oh.”</p><p>There’s a moment of silence, and then:</p><p>“Whose cat is it, then?”</p><p>Dr. Cho doesn’t look up from her work, but she lets out a small huff of air that sounds an awful lot like a laugh. </p><p>“I really don’t know,” Natasha says. “I think she just found it on Twitter.”</p><p>“Twitter,” James says slowly. “I’ve heard of that.”</p><p>Another, longer moment of silence. And then James’s mind snags on one particular word.</p><p>“You have a wife?” </p><p>Natasha nods, and her smile is warm.</p><p>“I do, yeah. We’ll have been married a year this May.”</p><p>James remembers seeing two young women kissed near his table at a California library he’d been holing up doing research in a month or so after his escape. He’d half-expected the entire library to erupt in outrage, but no one had even batted an eyelash. There’s something about the memory that still makes him deeply, inexplicably sad, but James has no idea why.</p><p>“Congratulations, then,” James says, a little awkwardly. “Or belated congratulations, I guess.”</p><p>“Thanks,” Natasha says. “Her name’s Sharon. You’ll meet her soon.”</p><p>“The most beautiful brides I’ve ever seen,” Dr. Cho says dreamily, “and the most beautiful wedding. Well, except for the part where Bruce knocked over the cake.”</p><p>“Oh, go easy on him, Doc,” Natasha says. “You know how hard it was for him to get used to the new body.”</p><p>New body?</p><p>Suddenly, the panels vanish, and Dr. Cho taps her tablet with an air of triumph.</p><p>“There we fucking go,” she says before pulling up an office chair and flopping down into it. She faces James, her eyes bright and focused.</p><p>“Okay, Mr. Barnes,” she says. “Let’s talk.”</p><p>James leans forward in his chair, and so does Natasha.</p><p>“Let’s go ahead and get the good news on the table first,” Dr. Cho says. “Your scans came back consistent with what we found in your files. I’m not going to throw too much jargon at you, but I was able to pinpoint the exact portions of your brain affected by the trigger words. We’ll perform the deprogramming procedure tomorrow, and you’ll be in the clear. No food or water after midnight tonight, okay?”</p><p>“Procedure.” James echoes. “As in...?”</p><p>Dr. Cho smiles.</p><p>“As in, we’ve called in a favor with the most brilliant mind on the face of the planet to ensure you have the safest, smoothest recovery possible.” She holds up her tablet. “The technology that allows me to safely scan you on the fly is nothing compared to this. It’s brain surgery without a single incision and no recovery time. It’s...”</p><p>Dr. Cho trails off, gesticulating wildly before composing herself, but the joy in her eyes is enough to power a small city.</p><p>“It’s light, Mr. Barnes,” she continues. “I could spend hours talking about it. I’d call it a laser, but that really doesn’t do it justice. It’s light that we’ll use to heal the neurological pathways damaged by Hydra’s brainwashing.”</p><p>James once again finds himself at a loss for words, so he simply nods.</p><p>“Now,” Dr. Cho says, “onto the subject of your memory. Why don’t you tell me a little about what you’ve been able to recall on your own?”</p><p>James tells her. He tells her about the notebook, about the days and nights spent poring over every single word of every single article written about him. Dr. Cho listens, and, mercifully, there’s no pity in her eyes when she looks at him.</p><p>“You know, Mr. Barnes,” Dr. Cho says when James is finished, “the most important thing a person can understand about their own brain is that it wants to protect you. It may not do a great job of it all the time, but by god, it tries. Sometimes that means it shuts down portions of itself in response to trauma, and the memory is usually the first to go. You’ve endured brainwashing longer than many people’s lifetimes. The fact that you were able to break through the trance they put you in, the fact that they had to fight so hard to keep you in it, the fact that you are able to remember your life before the war at all... that’s a miracle, do you understand? A miracle. With such a strong precedent, I’m confident more memories will return to you as time goes on. If not...” </p><p>Dr. Cho pauses, chewing thoughtfully at her bottom lip.</p><p>“I not going to condescend to you, Mr. Barnes,” Dr. Cho says quietly. “There’s a chance that some, or even most of your memories will not return. For that, I am truly sorry. But I hope that you will allow us to become part of the memories you make in the years to come.” She reaches out as if to touch James’s hand, then pulls back at the last second. To his surprise, James finds himself wishing she’d change her mind.</p><p>“You are dearly wanted here,” she says. “That is all.”</p><p>~</p><p>Natasha and James walk down the echoing hallway in silence. Through the massive floor-to-ceiling windows, James can see the forest that surrounds the compound, turned to silver in the light of the moon.</p><p>“Penny for your thoughts?” Natasha says.</p><p>James shrugs vaguely.</p><p>“Do they include motivational speaking as part of the training packet here?”</p><p>Natasha snorts, but her eyes are fond.</p><p>“Helen has a kind heart,” she says matter-of-factly. “She meant what she said. Every word of it.”</p><p>They turn the corner, and arrive at a tall door with the number 215 beneath the peephole. Natasha produces a keycard and hands it to James.</p><p>“Welcome to you new apartment,” she says. “I’ll be here tomorrow at seven to pick you up for the procedure. If you need anything, just ring.”</p><p>James turns the key over and over in his hand. </p><p>He has a place of his own now.</p><p>“Thanks,” he says, and he hopes beyond hope that Natasha doesn’t pay attention to the way his voice shakes.</p><p>She turns and walks away, and James is already opening the door when he hears her speak.</p><p>“James?”</p><p>James turns to look at her. In the soft light, she seems younger, smaller. He wonders, not for the first time, the things she’d seen before she became an Avenger.</p><p>“Yeah?”</p><p>She shakes her head, as if trying to wake herself from a dream, and then offers him a small smile.</p><p>“Nothing,” she says. “Sleep tight.”</p><p>But James doesn’t sleep at all. He knows that if he dreams at all tonight, it will be nothing but nightmares. So he paces his new apartment, acquainting himself with every curve and corner. It’s sparely furnished, almost Spartan, but it’s still the nicest room he’s ever been in. He pulls out all the clothes from his backpack and washes them, his first load of non-laundromat, non-wash basin laundry. He folds them once they’re dry, tucks them away in the mahogany drawers that feel far too expensive to house his ratty clothes that have know nothing but his back and the inside of a backpack for the past two years. He turns the TV on, then turns it off. He showers, even allows himself the luxury of shaving when he sees that however prepared this room left him a pack of Gillettes by the bathroom sink.</p><p>James sits on the center of his white bed and reads his notebook, over and over, until his vision blurs.</p><p>“I’m home,” James says, and he tries to make himself believe it.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>to be updated weekly (hopefully)</p></blockquote></div></div>
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